that it deserves and that it would repay much more attention than it generally receives, and particularly that it might, with great advantage, be employed as a means or an instrument of education during the later years of a course of study. It is greatly with a view to this purpose that this elementary book is put into the reader's hand.

24. Something still more definite than this may fairly be said in recommending our subject to the intelligent reader. In several instances, the indirect effects of a course of study are of more importance than any direct benefits which it may seem to hold forth as the ends or reasons why it should be prosecuted. This, undoubtedly, may be affirmed of classical studies. The direct advantages of a knowledge of the languages of ancient Greece and Rome are few, or they are such as attach only to certain professions. But when they are regarded as supplying the means of culture and refinement, no other pursuits can come in the place of them. A system of education which excludes a knowledge of Latin and Greek may meet the occasions of common life well enough, but it can never impart refined tastes, or give a full expansion to the intellect.

25. As much as this, or nearly as much, may be affirmed in behalf of intellectual philosophy. The human mind, in the study of its own structure, elaborates its faculties. In these studies its native forces are augmented, and habits are acquired more exact and more refined than such as are formed either by a mathematical training or in the pursuit of physical science. If, therefore, we should fail to make a good

plea for these studies on the ground of their direct practical utility, we should certainly succeed in recommending them as among the best means of intellectual culture. On this sure ground, therefore, it is well to take our stand. In religion, in politics, in social economy, the current of public thought runs strong, and it is seldom influenced, in any appreciable manner, this way or that, by forces so attenuated as are those of intellectual philosophy. Nevertheless, it is true that some men a few they will be as compared with the mass-may, in these studies, find the means of exempting themselves, individually, from the violences of that current, and may, from this higher ground, take a wider survey of social interests.

26. But to some minds mental science will be more than a temporary means of intellectual culture; it will be more than a method of training resorted to in the years that precede a man's entrance upon the business of life. The world of Mind will be the home of thought to a few, and especially it will become such if the breadth, the height, the depth of this universe of life are fairly opened up, and if, in the place of the evanescent subtilties of a cold analysis, there is brought before us the boundless objects of that great system throughout which the energies of conscious life are in course of development. If the phrase were used in an emphatic sense, then we should say that the world of Mind is the real world; and if only it be set forth in its vastness and variety, it will draw toward itself those spirits that are the most alive, and with whom feeling, and volition, and power-consciousness, and reflective action, and progress, are the characteristics

of the individual. As it is the distinction of man that he turns his thoughts inward upon the centre or source of thought, so it is the characteristic of a few minds that this intensity of life is with them their normal condition: they are reflective, by eminence, among their fellows, just as man is distinctively reflective among the orders around him.

27. We have said above (17) that because, in the department of mental philosophy, we sooner than in the physical sciences arrive at that barrier beyond which the human faculties make no progress, there ensues an unfounded supposition that a mysteriousness attaches to the former from which the latter are exempt. We have shown how it is that this illusory notion springs up. But having arisen, it is always likely to float about in the regions upon which we are entering. The hold it takes upon minds that are mystically disposed is strengthened by the imperfections of language. Now, therefore, when we are asking what are those useful purposes which may be secured by making acquaintance with intellectual philosophy, our answer is this: that, in doing so, we set ourselves free, or may do so, from the influence of this and similar illusions, and thus we may stand safe in regard to those bootless speculations which from time to time threaten the subversion of the most momentous truths.

28. Let it be well understood-once for all, and so that we shall not be compelled to retrace our stepsthat the unfathomable abyss toward the brink of which the human mind is ever tempted to draw near is as close at hand in the fields of physical science as it is in the field of intellectual philosophy; only that, in

the former, we are longer detained from looking down into it, and are more easily diverted from our purpose, and are sooner induced to draw back from the border. If we convince ourselves of this fact-and we may easily do so-then the one region of philosophy becomes as clear from clouds, and as open and safe, as the other. There are no mysteries on this ground if we do not make them, or there are none with which we need concern ourselves, if only we adhere to the authentic and universally-admitted rules and practices of modern science.

29. Still it must be so that to some this region will be a haunted ground. The questions that meet us stimulate curiosity in minds that are constitutionally inapt for abstract thought, or are incapable of strict analysis, and which quickly lose their grasp of what, for a moment, they have apprehended. Minds distinguished more by ardor than by strength, more excursive than analytic, are apt to imagine, at every turn, that a startling discovery is opening before them, and that to-morrow they shall be able to lift the veil which so long has concealed "the hidden nature of things.' Do we ask, then, what is the utility of the studies upon which we are entering? This if no other useful result may be secured, namely, an exemption from the invasions of lawless and interminable speculation.

II.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE SUBJECT.

30. In an elementary book, the rule of convenience in the order of subjects is usually of more importance than any imaginary good resulting from a strict adherence to a more exact or logical method. I shall follow this rule in the present instance, and shall adopt an arrangement which, as I believe, will be advantageous to the reader, although it deviates from the direct path.

31. Looking to subjects of all kinds which ordinarily take a place within the circle of intellectual philosophy, they present themselves as susceptible of an obvious distribution under three heads, as thus: there are subjects belonging properly to the PHYSIOLOGY of MIND, or psychology, as it is now called; such are whatever relates to sensation, perception, memory, and the like; secondly, themes of a more abstruse kind, and which may be designated as METAPHYSICAL: the terms space, time, cause, and effect, belong to this department; thirdly, there is what constitutes the science and the art of logic, which undertakes to show the methods best adapted to the acquisition and to the conveyance of knowledge, as well as the methods of reasoning and of philosophizing in all the sciences: the terms induction, deduction, syllogism, evidence, doubt, belief, and the like, belong to this third department.